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forget about the "conflicting licences" they just copy and paste the default licence of their private drivers on top of the free public driver, just read the GPLv2 inside the drivers, that's the one that matters.

Also, remember, this is the FIRST time ever creative launches a totally free open source driver in history.

Creative also pointed out in the forums that they have plans to continue to develop the drivers with help of the comunity, there are already a fix to their drivers with support for X-Fi Titanium, if you read the forums, creative is now actively taking notice of their drivers and the community, I suspect this interaction (as all open source interactions) will speed up the process of a working 5.1 full OpenAL driver.

I would say, it is very safe to buy a Creative X-Fi now, due to the way the drivers have taken from now on...

ATi gets away with it, because you can never really use the card to its full potential on Linux, cos there are no games or hardcore CAD apps.

- XSi
- Maya
- RealSoft 3D
- RealFlow
- VeriCAD

Yep, no hardcore 3D apps at all...

Sarcasm aside, the reason ATi now AMD is allowed to "get away" with less than stellar OpenGL support is because nVidia has awesome support and pretty much has the graphics workstation market sewn up even with all of the API breakage that the community throws at them

The real question should be however: Do we now have EAX under the GPL, or did they remove that before they relicensed it?

I know we go all apes**t when a company develops MS drivers before Linux, if ever it does have a Linux driver. But there are two reasons for a company to behave this way: single set of rules for the largest platform (customer base), and relying on the kindness of strangers.

Think about it: a company has finite capital to spend on new product development as well as current product management (and of course, R&D). They are going to try to sell to as many customers using the lowest cost profile. Right now, that means MS. Yes, it supposed to have a standardized computing platform but each distro has its own set of gotchas and development cycles.

The second part is that Linux started out as alternative, user base driven type of system. yes, thoughts of profit probably were in there, but open source is completely different than for-profit camps.

So for a company to maximize profitability, why not go with the greatest user base and also see if anyone out there was willing to try create their own set of drivers as open source? By neglecting a user base that already goes off and does their own thing is probably not a hard choice. Also one other point: open source is not friendly to non-disclosure. You might think a company's hardware profile is not that exciting but to the company any amount of time they can enjoy market dominance beofre copy catting takes place, means more opportunity of running the market. As soon as everyone else catches on, then you have to ensure your R&D has the next latest and greatest ready to deliver and re-establish market dominance.

I hate it works this way. I have my own beef with ATI/AMD and wished they could deliver drivers that are as functional as their MS drivers at release time, instead of two years later.

Originally Posted by EagleDM

Creative also pointed out in the forums that they have plans to continue to develop the drivers with help of the comunity, there are already a fix to their drivers with support for X-Fi Titanium, if you read the forums, creative is now actively taking notice of their drivers and the community, I suspect this interaction (as all open source interactions) will speed up the process of a working 5.1 full OpenAL driver.

Too Late?

Originally Posted by phoronix

Phoronix: Creative Gives In, They Open-Source Their X-Fi Driver

The Sound Blaster X-Fi sound card driver for Linux from Creative Labs was awful. That's simply the nicest way to put it. The driver was home to many bugs, initially only supported 64-bit Linux, and it was arriving extremely late. The open-source drivers supporting the Creative X-Fi drivers have also been at a stand still. However, Creative Labs today has finally turned this situation around and they have open-sourced the code to this notorious driver. The source-code for the Creative X-Fi driver is now licensed under the GNU GPLv2.

Wow!!! really good to finally have the drivers on the way. The question I would ask is, how much good will have Creative lost by dragging the chain? For me, having had mine since 2006, I now have a full ONKYO system having left the other "out in the cold" and Creative with it. Like others I have moved on to Hi definition 1080p TV + sound, and a bad taste in the mouth.

I think nvidia will, and already has... nvidia has a history of creating binary drivers, often very incompatible. Other than nvidia I think we'll have to focus on motherboard manufacturers. For example gigabyte has some nice stuff that only works in windows (some powersaving led feature has been mentioned on phoronix iirc, I also have it but my case is closed for about 99.99% of the time). Also Apple has a way of not supporting stuff in Linux, like the iPhone or iPod Touch. Ever since I stepped away from my Mac Mini I have only synced my iPod Touch once, and just for music.

Sarcasm aside, the reason ATi now AMD is allowed to "get away" with less than stellar OpenGL support is because nVidia has awesome support and pretty much has the graphics workstation market sewn up even with all of the API breakage that the community throws at them

The real question should be however: Do we now have EAX under the GPL, or did they remove that before they relicensed it?